


Let's not try to figure out everything at once.

by torches



Category: Eureka Seven
Genre: F/M, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-10
Updated: 2009-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 14:11:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torches/pseuds/torches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He just introduces himself as, simply, "I'm Renton Thurston, Eureka's husband."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's not try to figure out everything at once.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> For Nye, who wanted to know why I loved them.

1\. Eureka did not love Renton for a very long time. She thought he was cute, and she thought he was funny, but she also thought he was an idiot and excessively loud (and there was that voice in the back of her head that felt threatened when she realized he was learning so fast and she didn't want to feel obsolete).

To be honest, she could have easily hated him - hated him for poisoning Holland, hated him for being the child Talho pampered and teased that she never even thought of _trying_ to be - but she just found him annoying, instead, which may have been what caused so many problems.

Because annoyance wasn't enough to stop her from noticing the care he took around her. It wasn't enough to give her a reason to look away when he won her children over through persistence and simple fact of being just childish enough to think the same way they did. It wasn't enough to help her ignore how much he loved working on Nirvash, how hard it hit him to be unwelcome and unloved by people he just wanted to please.

His actions made him someone she cared for in ways she'd never cared for other people - it wasn't the mutual thread of guilt that tied her and Holland and let her trust the soldier he didn't want to be. It wasn't the responsibility she felt for Maurice, Maeter, and Linck. It was a care born out of nothing more than appreciation. And she was scared of that.

Fear drove her hard, in those days - even after her breakdown, when she fell from her own alien grace into a whirlwind of messy emotions, it was _fear_ that led her to say she loved Renton, well before either of them knew whether she meant it or not, and it nearly destroyed them both, and then he was _gone_ and every word felt like ashes on her tongue.

But, remarkably, she wasn't scared when he left. She'd spent so long learning how to be what people needed her to be that it wasn't until Renton was gone that she realized how hard it was to simply be herself without him there to let her be anyone.

But she could be herself. She could be anyone she wanted to be. She could be her own hero. She could be Renton's hero. She could be Holland's.

But she could _be_ a hero.

And heroes didn't let their friends - didn't let the ones they loved - run away without chasing them to the ends of the earth, through the gates of hell if they had to.

So that's what she did.

(Even in the moments when she didn't believe she was worth the description, it was never because she doubted what she wanted to be. She just held herself to too high a standard. But she always came back to herself eventually.)

2\. Ray and Charles Beams have no graves. Their ashes lie scattered across the sky, where they'll fly forever.

But that didn't sit well with Renton, so one day he asked Holland to tell him where Ray and Charles got married, and when Holland came back to him with an answer, he went home and told Eureka that they needed to take a trip, and knelt down on one knee and put his hands around Maurice's shoulders, a smile on his face, and said "Do you think you can help me dig a few graves with your mama?"

Maurice swallowed hard and nodded, and a few days later their small family took Renton's grandfather's beat-up pickup and drove for three days till they reached the outskirts of a small city called Motown.

Renton and Eureka (and Maurice) dug two graves, and in one they laid a ring and in the other they laid a gun. Maeter held Linck like she'd seen Eureka hold Renton the last time they'd had to remember the Beams' and it seemed to work, because he didn't cry.

"If I'm half as good a father as Charles Beams, I think I'll be happy," Renton said, after they finished pouring the ground back in, and his hand tightened where it laid on Maurice's shoulder.

Eureka's hand came up to rest, gently, in the small of Renton's back, and stayed there until it started to get dark and they had to leave.

3\. The first time Renton and Eureka try to have sex, they're living in the new addition to Renton's grandfather's rebuilt shack and nobody's put locks on any of the doors yet, which is why it takes them two hours to find a single moment that isn't immediately interrupted by small children screaming in horror at naked Papa (Maeter) or making fun of Renton's tiny penis (Maurice) or wondering why they're doing something that looks so stupid (Linck), and by the time they get a moment to themselves (the children have run out of energy and finally, _finally_, fallen asleep), they're so exhausted they can't do anything but collapse against each other, laughing, and promise to try again in the morning.

Renton falls asleep running his fingertips over the edge of her wings.

It takes them a month and a half before they remember they'd never kept that promise, and another month beyond that before they ever do.

(It just never ends up one of their priorities.)

4\. Renton and Eureka end up minor religious icons despite their best efforts to make people stop thinking of them that way, and one day Eureka finally has enough of it and screams at one of the penitent Vodarac pilgrims, "I AM NOT YOUR FUCKING SYMBOL TO WORSHIP!" and it's anyone's guess whether it's the swearing or the screaming that makes the worshippers stop showing up, but it works, and it only takes a few days before Eureka stops glaring at everyone who isn't her family (and even sometimes them, too) and finally breaks down sobbing.

Renton bakes a pie and feeds her a slice, forked piece after forked piece, rubbing her back and murmuring to her, and then just holds her.

"You could - cry - too," she says. "I know you want to."

"You did it for me," he says in reply. "And you'd hold me like this if I were."

5\. Renton could call himself a few dozen different things when he introduces himself to people who've never met him before. "Savior of the universe," for example, "chief engineer of Bell Forest," for another. "Adroc's son," he could use too, now that he's come to terms with such a legacy. "The King of the World," he could get away with, too, since it's true (sort of). Some people even call him "the next Holland."

He never takes the credit; to everyone's bafflement (but to his grandfather's enduring pride), he just introduces himself as, simply, "I'm Renton Thurston, Eureka's husband."


End file.
